It stinks to lose your job! Losing your job is one of those things that can completely upend your life, causing tremendous stress and a loss of confidence if you let it.

Conversely, sudden unemployment can also be an opportunity for a new direction or a whole new career. Either way, you have to take control over your situation if you want to move forward successfully.

In this post I’ll show you 13 essential things you must do when you lose your job. You’ll also discover some awesome resources that’ll help you find your next job or transition into a new career entirely!

I also have several great resources available below. They’ll help you find your next job or discover if a new career direction is in the cards for you.

So let’s get started…

When You Lose Your Job, Take a Deep Breath

The first thing you should do when you first get laid off is to take a deep breath and realize it’s not the end of the world. Yeah, it may be stressful to lose your job in the short term, but you’ll recover.

Reflect on Why You Got Fired

Sometimes losing your job has nothing to do with you. But often it does. Maybe the company was not doing well and they had to reduce head count just to stay viable. Or maybe you weren’t living up to your potential…

Whatever the cause, it’s a good idea to ask yourself a few difficult questions to evaluate what you could have done better. Here are a few questions you should ask yourself:

Being brutally honest with yourself can go a long way toward not making the same mistakes in your next job.

Rethink Your Career Direction

If you’ve been thinking about a career change, losing your job may be just the trigger you need to make the jump!

This might mean taking on a different position in the same industry, or transitioning to an entirely new industry requiring a different set of skills. Losing your job might just be what you needed to leave a job that wasn’t a good fit and find something you really love!

Here are a couple of great books that’ll help you get the creative juices flowing:

Did You Get a Severance Package?

If you got a severance package that’s great! I still think it’s a good idea to cut your expenses down to the basics until you get a new job. That way, if it takes longer than expected to get a job, you will have that in reserve.

But if you get another job in a short time, you can put your severance package into savings or investments and grow that money for the future!

Get Some Exercise

After you lose your job, it’s easy to feel lost and depressed. Getting some exercise is a great way to stay active and not sit on the couch feeling sorry for yourself.

Daily exercise releases endorphins that naturally battle depression and help you stay positive. Heck, you might even lose a little weight!

Don’t Hunker Down

This goes along with exercising. The worst thing you can do is sit around the house eating chips and feeling sorry for yourself. That’s a quick road to depression. It kills your motivation to move forward after you lose your job, making it harder to find the next one.

Here are a few things you can do to avoid sitting at home feeling sorry for yourself:

Get out and socialize. You don’t have to spend money to enjoy the company of others.

Check Your Health Insurance When You Lose Your Job

Of course, health insurance is very important. In most cases you can keep your health insurance through a COBRA plan after you lose your job. If not, you can buy a cheap individual plan to get by until you get a new job.

You have no control over what may happen while you’re unemployed. Therefore health insurance is a must to help keep a financial disaster at bay.

Review Your Social Media Profiles

Now would be a good time to make sure your social media profiles are up to date.

LinkedIn- Make sure your employment history is correct and all your skills and certifications are up to date. You may also need to update your profile picture to a more recent/more professional picture.

Facebook and Twitter- Check for anything controversial in your feed that a prospective employer may not like. Make sure none of your crazy friends have left any bad comments on your wall or tagged you in any pictures you don’t want an employer to see.

Hit Your Job Search Hard

Be careful about delaying your job search. It’s easy to lack motivation and direction about searching for a job and suddenly months have gone by without any real progress.

Just posting your resume on Monster.com and waiting for a reply won’t get you anywhere fast.

Make finding your next job a full time job until you get what you’re looking for.

Contact Your Creditors

Anyone you owe money to should be contacted. Creditors are usually willing to work with you if they know you’ve had a job loss. They will want to help you work out a temporary solution to keep you from falling far behind.

Count Your Blessings

No matter how devastating losing your job may be, realize there is always something to be thankful for. A job loss is only temporary. In fact, you’ll find many people that will tell you losing their job (in hindsight) was the best thing that could have happened to them!

Sometimes losing your job forces you to change some things you’ve been meaning to work on. Sometimes it causes you to pivot into a new career or even a business of your own.